One day, the worms are gonna eat us all anyway.

So, about being mother of the year. I have been going on and on and will continue to go on and on about my big night at the Preschool Parent Social. It was legit. I bid on some art, I hung out with grown ups, oh, and I won 1/2 off tuition. Again, legit.

The social was something I'd been hearing about for a few weeks and had been pretty intently avoiding. Ryan was going to be at work and I could just see myself, wall flower Liz, watching as all these Mercedes Moms enjoy their cosmos (what's even in that, again?) and me wondering why I even showed up. So, no. This was not on my agenda. Until one day....

As I was waiting in the hallway with a few of the other parents, I was asked about the social. I told them I didn't want to go alone and have no one to talk to. They assured me that they would talk to me and that it would be super fun so I should go. So super jazzed up, I go home to tell Ryan about these people who clearly want to be my new best friends and grab a $20 to by my ticket.

So I show up to the party, all alone. While at the gym prior, I heard that "Tonight's gonna be a good night" song (judge if you will) and determined to make it my anthem. I end up about halfway through, talking to one of the dad's I'd never met before. (Ironically, his son and my little gal beat each other up pretty frequently). We get to talking about the "So what do you do?" 's and all of grown up land. He tells me of his many years (he's 42 vs. my 25) of being a real estate lawyer. He tells me how he's missed a lot of time with his family, though working from home. I tell him very proudly of Ryan's life as a restaurant manger-turned-photographer and our struggle for balance and what career choices to make. He says "Oh, you guys are just babies. You have all the time in the world for making these big choices! You've got to do what gets food on the table and a roof over your head. It all passes by so quickly and you don't get the time back. One day, the worms are gonna eat us all anyway."

I stood, probably slack-jaw, at these unexpected words of wisdom. It may sound grim but it is so true. What I gathered from him was like the passages in Ecclesiastes that tell us it's all meaningless--- all of it. I am SO quick to run down the road and hang out with my homeless friends. I'm super quick to be friends for life with people in the same tax bracket as myself. And I often judge and refuse those who have what seems to be an abundant lifestyle. I think I have so much in common with the afflicted brother or sister or the oppressed. But I forget that really, life is the same for all of us.... we live, we strive, we toil, we die.

I should adopt in life what we do in death: That there are no distinctions, that our bodies all wear out the same and find the same fate, and that big or small we take none of it with us. No matter what you possess, you cannot stop the inevitable. My hope is that I will stop living in a self-inflicted inferiority to these different classes of people and stop seeing money as a determining factor for someone's worth. I certainly don't look down on those who have little but I hastily shun those who are well off. I make assumptions that all anyone lives for is money. Well, in reality, maybe it's just me. I'm thinking I need to take my blinders off and see it all for what it really is: meaningless.